Honor Above Duty
by Shekiah Rosay
Summary: A little window into Charles's life before Korea - way before Korea, in fact. More like junior high school. A Winchester is raised to be a gentleman above all else... but don't you dare pick on Honoria, or you might see a different side of him. (One-shot.)


A little window into Charles's life before Korea - way before Korea, in fact. More like junior high school. A Winchester is raised to be a gentleman above all else... but don't you dare pick on Honoria, or you might see a different side of him. (One-shot.)

So one of my favorite things to do is write exposes that give you a little view into the development of a less-popular character and show you a tiny sliver of what made them who they are or prompted them to act a certain way in the main storyline. Across my various fandoms, I've done this with Rosalie Hale (Cullen), Seto Kaiba, and Javert... so now it's CEM III's turn. :) Hope you enjoy. Also, if you want, you can read the painfully long author's note justifying why Honoria is younger than Charles in this story. Just scroll to the bottom until you see **. Or don't, and just take my word for it that there's a good reason. ;) I don't own any copyright stuff related to M*A*S*H, but enjoy!

* * *

A big, round tear began to roll down the cheek of the girl with the blonde pigtails.

"That's so m-m-m-mean," she whispered. "Why are y-you being m-m-mean to me?"

The laughter of the boys clustered around her only grew louder at these words.

"Stop it J-j-j-joe," one of them said, turning to the boy who seemed to be the ringleader of the group. "Did you hear that? You're being 'm-m-m-mean!'"

The laughter escalated even more - and the little girl's tears became sobs - but few heads turned to see what was taking place. The altercation was unfortunately occurring beyond most of the crowd, at the very edge of the schoolyard fence where the girl had been waiting for her brother to walk home with her. He had told her at lunch that he would be a few minutes late because he was staying to talk to one of his teachers, but she hadn't worried about waiting a little longer than usual; it was supposed to be a sunny day - if not a little bit cold.

She hadn't forseen the school bully and his friends taking advantage of her aloneness to torment her even further.

"Please s-s-stop," she choked out. "I just w-w-ant to go h-h-ome!"

Her stuttering grew steadily worse as she became more nervous. She had remarked over the years that anxiousness nearly always made her stuttering more severe - but at the same time, circumstances in which she was nervous were usually the worst possible ones to stutter through. It was a cruel sort of irony.

"Going home to _M-m-m-mommy?_" the smallest boy demanded. "Why didn't your m-m-m-mommy pay somebody to teach you to talk, huh?"

"Yeah!" the boy called Joe exclaimed, overcome by a new wave of laughter. "God knows they have the mone - "

Joe was cut off mid-sentence as another boy – this one a year or two older – seemed to come out of nowhere and tackle him to the ground. A few of Joe's cronies scattered, and the little girl with the pigtails gasped in horror.

"Charles, _don't!_" she shrieked.

It was as though her brother hadn't even heard her. From where he sat astride Joe's stomach, he used the latter's collar to lift his head high enough off the ground that they could be nose-to-nose.

"You leave my sister_ alone!_" he shouted. "Who do you think you are!?"

Joe, who had landed roughly on the pavement only a few moments before, gave a strangled cry of anger and pain. One of his more loyal followers attempted to grab Charles by the shoulders and pull him off, and Charles elbowed him in the gut - but that moment of distraction gave Joe the opening he needed to send a right hook directly into the cheek of his assailant.

Charles gasped in shock and pain, but rather than letting the other boy go, he grabbed hold of his wrists and shoved his knuckles behind him into the gravel. A crowd had begun to gather around by then, and a few of them - probably some other victims of Joe's teasing - began to cheer loudly.

"_Get him_, Winchester!"

"_Yeah_! Punch him back!"

The young girl, however, only sobbed louder than ever.

"St-stop fighting, Charles," she begged. Mother and F-f-f-ather will _kill_ you!"

"Honoria, stay out of this!"

Just as Charles raised up a fist to strike Joe in return, a shrill whistle was blown somewhere behind them. Startled, the crowd scattered almost instantly - leaving only Joe, Charles, and poor Honoria to face the scowling physical education teacher who approached them.

"What is the _meaning_ of this?" the man demanded, taking a moment to allow the image of the three children to sink in. They were a motley crew - Joe's collar had torn and the back of his hands were scraped raw, and Charles's lower lip was bleeding profusely. Honoria was unharmed except for her puffy red eyes and trembling hands, which held tightly onto to a red tobogganing cap that had fallen off her brother's head in the scuffle.

"Sir, you must understand that this boy was tormenting my baby sister," Charles said quickly, getting to his feet and wiping his lip on the back of his hand.

The teacher paused.

"Are you alright?" he finally asked, turning to Honoria.

Honoria, who was afraid to open her mouth and talk, managed to nod weakly.

"Then you can go home – but these boys will have to answer for their actions."

Charles cut in quickly.

"But Mr. Willingham - "

"Not a word out of you," the teacher snapped.

"Wh-what he means to say is, I'm n-n-not supp-posed to walk home by myself," Honoria whispered.

Willingham sighed.

"Then I suppose you'll have to come with us to the headmaster's office. Your parents can pick you up when they come to get _him_."

Charles made one last attempt to sway his mind.

"Sir, it's after school hours, this hardly counts as a school matter - "

"I said, enough out of you!" Willingham shouted, taking Charles by the shoulder and shoving him in the direction of the school. "You got into a fight on school property, so after hours or not, it's the business of the administration to see that there are consequences. Now _walk!_"

A sour expression on his face, Charles began the soujourn back to the main office of the red brick building. The others trailed behind him, Joe shaking like a leaf despite himself and Honoria still crying silently. After what seemed like much longer than a few yards, the group finally made it back up the marble stairs, down the main hallway, and to the headmaster's door.

"Miss Winchester, you're not in any trouble, but you're going to have to wait out here," the teacher said to Honoria, indicating a bench in the hallway. "Your brother and his classmate will be given a chance to explain themselves – and then your parents will be called."

Honoria nodded mutely and took a seat. She watched in helpless silence as Charles and Joe were ushered into the office and become blurs behind the wavy glass of the window. Other than the muffled sound of a few voices behind the closed door, the school was eerily silent.

It felt like much longer than a half-hour before Mrs. Winchester arrived.

Eleanora Gilette Winchester was tall, with wavy reddish-blonde hair and pursed red lips. Though she was fairly young – only in her early thirties – nothing about the way she was dressed or the hardness in her expression suggested youthfulness. She wore a mink coat over her muted floral dress, and her high heels clicked on the linoleum as she walked quickly down the hallway toward where Honoria sat.

"Mother!" the little girl exclaimed, jumping to her feet. "Mother, they've taken Charles in there!"

"So I've heard," Mrs. Winchester replied. "Wait here."

Wasting no time knocking, the Winchester matron swung open the headmaster's door, stepped inside, and promptly shut it behind her.

Honoria heard the muffled voices rise again… but that time, a few seconds later, they all went quiet. Around that time, Mrs. Winchester and Charles – who was holding a paper towel tightly to his still-bleeding lip – stepped back through the door. The former did nothing to prevent its slamming in their wake.

"Come, Honoria," Mrs. Winchester said sharply. "We're going to the car."

Something about the way she said those words seemed very ominous. Honoria looked over at Charles to see if he would give her any indication of either alarm or comfort, but his eyes were downcast and his mouth was set in a defiant line.

Honoria resisted the tears that threatened to well up in her eyes all over again.

Unlike the walk from the schoolyard to the headmaster's office, the walk down to the family car went by all-too-quickly. The second they were all inside and the doors were shut, Mrs. Winchester rounded on Charles.

"How _dare _you?" she exclaimed, her eyes wide with anger. "What on _Earth _did you think you were doing?"

"Mother, Joe was teasing Honoria," Charles insisted, for the thousandth time. "I couldn't just let him – "

"So your method for stopping him was _tackling_ him? Getting into some kind of brawl like a drunken Irish factory worker?!"

_"__Mother, he was just – "_

"Honoria Adelaide Winchester, this is _not_ the time! Your brother has just dishonored our family name and perhaps irreparably damaged his chances of moving on to a secondary school worthy of his status, and none of that bodes well for your future, either."

By that time, tears were running down Honoria's face anew, but she didn't dare speak up again. Charles didn't say a word either – but the defiant look he gave his mother was still enough to earn him a sharp smack of his mother's hand against his temple.

"You still don't understand the magnitude of what you've done, do you?" she demanded. "You are a _Winchester_. Every move you make, every word you say, reflects back on our family. It is your responsibility to honor your name and carry on the Winchester legacy, so I don't _ever_ want to drive up here and make apologies for you like this again. Is that understood?"

Charles nodded. His mother sighed deeply as she turned back to face the steering wheel and started the ignition.

"I should hope so."

* * *

A/N: Soooo I hope you enjoyed. It got a little bit heavy there at the end, but I think it's important to note the amount of pressure that was put on Charles to live up to his name and act as a Winchester was supposed to act. This had to have been very deeply ingrained on his psyche to cause him to act the way he did for so long, even as far away from Boston as Korea. I also hope you all liked scrappy little fighting Charles. I'd venture to say it's in character for the age I imagined him in this story (eleven or so). We know that even as a 30-year-old doctor, he has a short fuse and loves his sister deeply, so I think it's fair to imagine that something like this could have happened before he grew up and learned to control his temper.

**Now, that long a/n I promised about Honoria's age and how I think it's actually canon that she's younger. We've been told very little about Honoria, but here are the context clues they've given us about her age:

-One of Charles's siblings (which must be Honoria, because Timmy died when Charles was very young) is married and has a son old enough to get shipped off to Korea (which would imply she is older than Charles's 30-ish years)  
-Honoria is _unmarried_ and about to marry an Italian, at which point Charles writes her and says she is no longer the "naïve LITTLE sister" he left behind  
-Charles tells Hawkeye that he was allowed to speak first at family dinners because he was the OLDER of the two siblings  
-Honoria eloped with someone at some point prior to Charles leaving for Korea  
-Honoria once had a wedding where an attendee got really drunk and inspires a story Charles tells at the 4077 (not clues about her age, but more inconsistent information)

So... unless Charles is a good bit older than we think (which would be another inconsistency, given that he TELLS us the date he graduated from Harvard), Honoria eloped at a VERY very young age (and then came back and had a wedding, then had a child, then divorced, and later decided she was going to get engaged to an Italian man) none of this adds up. Umm, sorry MASH. So long story short, I interpret that mess as an invitation to create my own version of Honoria as way to explore Charles's character. My Honoria conforms to items two and three on the above list, so I've more or less done some picking and choosing from the many different scenarios the show has presented to us. I've decided Honoria is about five years younger. I like the idea of Charles taking care of a younger kid-sister.

Other random fun fact, in case you're still reading: I made Charles's mother's maiden name "Gilette." This is intentional, because the Gilette razor company was actually founded in Boston around the turn of the 20th century, and the heir to King C. Gilette's fortune would probably have done well to marry a Winchester. ;)

Thanks for reading!


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